The main thing I don’t like about this cartoon is that it overly pathologizes the students in the classroom.  It does effectively home in on some resonant misgivings, though:  that the approach in generic ‘education reform’ tends to focus on what teachers do wrong instead of right, that the media and the generic politician tend to love this framing (we need to get rid of these incompetent teachers!) and that the challenges of teaching in our school system today–from the complex range of circumstances our students may be facing to the mania of over testing– are very real.

Thoughts?  What might this teacher say in response to this particular framing and accusation?

What's Wrong With This Picture?

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

“I don’t really think there was a secret ingredient other than people being able to move past their doubts and seize an opportunity.  It was a chance to create opportunities where the rewards outweighed the risks.   I don’t think we do that much in public education…”

“You need to build systems…to demonstrate that teachers, by and large, succeed in their work.”

“I think that we, as unions and teachers, have felt so victimized by accountability that we have almost betrayed our own mission as a profession.”

Brad Jupp, Education Sector Interview in April 2006

***

Brad is a very laid back guy.  And that’s particularly impressive when you consider his current position as the Senior Program Advisor for Teacher Quality Initiatives in the U.S. Department of Education.  This is an individual who has the ear of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and has considerable, if not central, influence on any federal policies that relate to teacher quality and effectiveness.

U.S. Department of Education Senior Advisor Brad Jupp

As a former middle school English teacher and union activist in the Denver public schools, he is most known for his role in the development of Denver’s ProComp teacher compensation system—one which ties teacher incentives to both school and student performance and growth.

I met Brad through the Teaching Ambassador Program, a teaching fellowship designed to orient and involve teachers in national, state and local education policy.  A total of four BPS teachers, incidentally, have been a part of, or currently participate, in this program, including Steven Berbeco from Charlestown High School, Shakera Walker from Young Achievers Science and Math School and Robert Baroz from the Curley School.   Applications for the 2012-2013 cohort have recently opened so definitely take a look and pass on the word.

He was generous enough to spend nearly an hour with me this past November while attending the Council of the Great City Schools conference in Boston.  I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, especially as it related to one of the core questions of The Teaching Pulse:  What local, statewide and national policy initiatives should we teachers be aware of, and what are practical ways and avenues to influence and implement those policies?’

***

Thanks, Brad, for taking the time to meet and talk with me this morning.  It’s an incredible privilege.  One key goal of this interview is to emphasize the idea that [education] policy is important, policy affects us and at times, we can actually shape it.

How would you best describe your role in the U.S. Department of Education and what you do?

I comprehend it first by its breathtaking scale.  I was always overwhelmed in Denver by how many teachers I represented when I was a union leader and how many teachers worked for us when I was in the superintendent’s office.  [And] I knew most of them.

In the Department of Education, what I think is amazing is [to consider] this huge river of 3.3 million people.  The teaching workforce is enormous.  And it works under incredibly decentralized circumstances.  You can’t say that the teacher who works in New Jersey works under the same circumstances as the one who teaches in California.  But you also can’t say that the teacher who works in Los Angeles works under the same circumstances as the teacher who works in Sacramento.  And so it’s not just a problem of enormity, it’s a problem of complexity.

Size and decentralization makes for enormity and complexity.  [It’s] been a real challenge to learn the best ways to shape the directions that the people who make up this river of people flow in.  There’s a current [in this river, for instance] where 30% of the people who have been hired have left the job within two or three years after they were hired.  You should ask:  ‘What’s causing that current’?’  Then you should ask, ‘what can be done to alter that current?’  And in something that’s enormous and something that’s complicated, it’s not going to be a simple, single gesture.

So I think the short end of this long introduction is that learning how to make the right precise moves to change the trajectory of the teaching profession has been the greatest challenge of the job that I’ve been in for the past two and a half years.  It’s not been easy.

[It seems] like a tremendous role and responsibility, to not only identify and understand what the currents are, but to also try and establish interventions, policies or even [think them through]…

Very often what people do wrong is [when] they come in with a political orientation and some policy preferences.  And they impose them.  I think the case that I was making is that you actually have to learn how these currents move before you do that, before you can alter them effectively.

I’m making the case for knowing how this workforce moves rather than knowing the right sets of policy interventions.

So you’re thinking of yourself more as a gatherer of information, understanding how it works…

Maybe the right word for it, James, and I know it might not be good interview material because it’s too abstract… I’m a pragmatist.  I work with the materials and conditions that I got.  I’m not an idealist.  I don’t work backwards from a set of perfect ideas that I think need to be imposed on this incredibly complex and decentralized workforce.

Nice… well, to bring it back to the day-to-day, because you have this experience, how has being a teacher yourself and an accomplished unionist affected how you do your work now? 

So, I think the teacher weighs much more heavily than the union background.  To be a good teacher I had to be constantly ask, ‘What do kids know, how is their knowledge changing, and what evidence am I using to feel confident that their knowledge is changing the way I hope it will?’  I use that way of thinking in every aspect of my work, whether I’m working with the state leader, union leader, school teachers, [or] a governor.  ‘What do they know?’  Then I ask, ‘how do I know that what they know is changing and what evidence am I going to use?’  I apply that way of thinking with everybody.

I think what I bring from my background as a union leader, first and foremost, is the sentiment that working people want first and foremost, good, fruitful jobs; not the political struggle that they often find themselves in.  And then second, I bring a really three-dimensional understanding of the psychology that [often] occurs in the relationship between unions and school districts, [and between] unions and state legislatures… Frankly, I’ve been on all sides of the table.  And I have an insight into what’s in people’s heads on all sides of the table at this point.  And that’s because [like I mentioned earlier], I pay attention to [connecting evidence to shifts in understanding with] whomever I’m working.  Over the years, [I’ve gathered] an experience base in thinking like a leader of a local, of thinking like a leader of a state affiliate, or thinking like a superintendent or thinking like a governor’s education policy aide.

So the union experience is double.  I understand the aspirations of the people that unions represent and I also understand the motivations and sentiments of people who represent large numbers of teachers.

I love the word ‘attentiveness’ because I think that cognitively, that’s really complex.  Especially when you come in with your ideas or you may be influenced, as we all are, by a political background, or way of looking at the work, or personal experiences that affect how we do our work.   To be attentive doesn’t mean you disregard it, but you almost categorize it in your head a certain way so that you’re looking at things fairly and really listening to all the different perspectives.

You can never disabuse yourself of your own biases but you can always take into account someone else’s as you try to create progress.

That’s a nice one… (laughing)

So one of the goals of this column is to [emphasize] that education policy is something that is important for teachers to understand.  So from your perspective and position in the Department of Education, what are the most important policy initiatives that teachers should be aware of right now?  In particular, which ones directly impact us in our classrooms?

I think the most important policy initiative is actually a bundle of different initiatives that are associated with college and career ready standards.  I’ve been in the classroom or in jobs that have been close to the classroom for twenty-five years and in the course of those years, I’ve seen three to four sets of standards wash up on the beach of my classroom.  And they didn’t really affect what I did much, although the last set that washed up in the form of accountability initiatives that preceded NCLB in Colorado did affect the way my school was organized because we started to care a lot more about whether kids were proficient or not and we began to pay a lot more attention to kids on the cusp of proficiency.  Because the numbers made us pay attention to them.   We didn’t know if it was the right thing or the wrong thing; I think it was probably somewhere in the middle, but until there [were] external circumstances asking us to pay attention to proficiency rates, the standards were largely aesthetic.  They were binders with suggested student content that we were supposed to apply as English teachers if our kids were to be on track.

So would you say that there wasn’t oversight there?

Until there was external accountability at the state level, there were not powerful, coercive forces to make us pay attention to the standards, so we didn’t.  We did what we wanted.  Now I’m not for powerful and coercive standards, I’m for recognizing that before the accountability movement, there was not a lot of attention to what the state standards were or what the district standards were, at least in [the] Denver Public Schools.  And with that, there was not much attention [paid] to whether or not kids were succeeding on the standards.

To this end, I think that the powerful thing about College and Career Ready Standards comes in two steps.  The first step is if we as a profession are going to get serious, we’re not going to be coerced into owning the outcomes of these standards, but we’re going to adopt them because they’re the right, good thing.  And the second is, if we’re going to be serious about those standards, and serious about the fact that they’re supposed to get all kids to college and career readiness, we’re going to be serious about the fact that the work that we have to do in order to attain those standards is different than the work we’re doing now.  And I contend, because I’ve studied them as an English teacher, the language arts expectations under College and Career Ready Standards are as good as my expectations when I entered the field in the 1980s… and very, very difficult to execute in the classroom.

When we as a profession embrace these [new standards], we’re embracing them because they’re the right thing for the kids to do, but we’re also embracing them as hard work.  And we’re going to need to honest with ourselves that they will challenge us, me, and my colleagues to do new and sometimes more difficult things.

I’m convinced that just as College and Career Ready standards are really important, I’m also convinced that a lot of the debate around teacher effectiveness, a lot of the debate around teacher capital management, is actually small fry compared to this big fish.

So it’s about the Common Core [the adopted College and Career Ready Standards framework].

The Common Core is something that the profession, if it chooses to own it, and chooses to own it as thoroughly as I just described it, will actually just swamp all of the little squeaky arguments of ‘this measure of teacher performance’ or ‘that human capital management decision to give somebody a raise or to advance someone to new rung on a career ladder…’

So the Common Core is a more significant policy issue than even the Flexibility Waivers that states are currently applying for as related to No Child Left Behind?

Yes, because I don’t think you can actually do the next generation of accountability systems that are anticipated by the [Elementary and Secondary Education Act] Flexibility, without the Common Core to animate them.

Can you think of some practical ways and avenues that you might suggest for teachers to understand, influence and implement policies like these in our school districts at the local level?  How do we make policy less abstract and how do we understand it, influence it and implement it?

Be a building rep for your union, be on your building faculty senate or building committee, partner with people in the central office so that you are a practitioner [figuring out] the difficult problems of execution with administrators, because just like teachers don’t want reform to be done to them, they want it to be done with them, administrators want policy implementation to be done with them, not policy implementation arguments done to them.  And we should assume that no one wants to be part of that kind of loud argument.

And don’t hesitate to use those opportunities to be building reps and union leaders and district leaders as vehicles for career advancement.  The ambitions of teachers to be successful and efficacious are the things that actually animate the best things about their career.  And we should always be encouraging teachers to act on those aspirations.

So even in those particular roles, if those conversations aren’t happening, [should we] begin them?

Begin them, encourage them to come, and then also ask… we’ve talked about this now two or three times, ask ‘what is going on in the minds of the other people in this dialogue that would lead it to be successful or unsuccessful?  And how can I take into account their motives and my motives so we’re not adversaries but we’re solving the same problem?’

And that, I think, the idea that we’re working together to solve common problems, is the beginning of almost all progress.

That’s a perfect segway for the last two pieces [of this interview].  It sounds like collaboration and [the conditions that are] required for collaboration to take root.  

I read a really great interview that you did with Education Sector in April of 2006, the year following the successful funding and implementation of ProComp initiative in the Denver Public Schools.  At one point, you said: I don’t really think there was a secret ingredient other than people being able to move past their doubts and seize an opportunity. It was a chance to create opportunities where the rewards outweighed the risks. I don’t think we do that much in public education.

What can we do, as teachers and as members of our teachers union, to make this happen more often in general?  Or even more specifically, here in the Boston Public Schools?

In a sentence, navigate towards your best hopes and away from your worst fears.

Too much of the adversarial discourse in public education is discourse buttressed by worst fears.  ‘What if the worst principal in the world were in charge of that school?’  We need a rule to protect all teachers against the possibility of the worst principal in the world.

It’s the wrong way to be organized.  [We] should be organizing instead on ‘how do we get the best principal in the world in as many schools as we’ve got?  That means that we’re going to need really great incentive packages for principals, and by golly they might need to be paid more than teachers and as maybe as a teacher union leader, I need to advocate that we accelerate the pay for high school principals so that the working conditions in my high schools get better.

It’s a simple example, but if you begin to think like that, then you can begin to proliferate other examples.

So is it up to the individual teachers in our buildings as building reps, as partners with district officials, to talk and frame the conversation in that way?  Because sometimes a lot of the rhetoric out there is very negative, as you’re probably already aware.. how do we break through that?

I think the most important thing that teacher leaders can do is to say, ‘But wait. There are some benefits here.  But wait.  What are the right, prudent ways to protect against the fair things that are being raised by the people who are afraid against worst hopes?’

We didn’t say, when we negotiated ProComp, ‘let’s embrace the arbitrary and capricious.’  We said instead, ‘let’s embrace the reasonable, the consistent, the credible…’ and then we said, ‘let’s make sure we’re protecting against the arbitrary and capricious by embracing [the] reasonable and consistent and credible.’  We never said anything about getting it all right.  We always said though, we want to keep our antennae up and avoid treating people badly.  And what’s more, we made a commitment to use data as a way to inform our future decisions so that we were not being arbitrary and capricious.

And when you say ‘we,’ you mean… as teachers or as the collaborative team?

Labor and management, the collaborative team.  Absolutely.

What was the structure of that team?

There were a number of different shared decision-making bodies.  One, the design team that led the pay-for-performance pilot, was two teachers and two administrators who managed the implementation of a difficult project.  Another, the joint salary task force, was five teachers, three principals and two central officers who managed the policy development for the pay system.  And there were other collaborative bodies as well.  There were management teams, there were executive teams, and at all levels, we made sure that there were good problem solving ethics and a high degree of pragmatic practice, guiding the way we did our work.

We didn’t negotiate much, we problem solved a whole lot.

But were those particular task forces borne of negotiations?  Was there a deliberate decision to create those collaborative groups?

So this is really important, James.

All of those bodies were borne from their need, not from the preconceived agreement and in fact, one of the hallmarks of the early pay-for-performance pilot was that we adapted the design team away from what it was originally agreed to do into something very different.

And we didn’t reopen the labor agreement to do it.

I’m a strong believer that pre-textual power sharing agreements only go so far.  And most labor agreements, especially most agreements to collaborate, are just pre-textual power sharing agreements.   What I care more about is not the power sharing, but the outcomes.  Power sharing to no outcome is useless; it just makes people comfortable.

What we did in the period of time from the beginning of the pay-for-performance pilot through the successful election in ProComp was to create problem-solving tables in which the problem that needed to be solved trumped the power-sharing relationship, at any moment.

That was just the tacit understanding?  That was the agreement from the people at the table and how they communicated?

At the risk of making it sound mystical, because it wasn’t, it was the culture that we led together.  And it was the way that we framed the problem.  And I don’t want to make it sound like there were human variables or like I was one of them because I don’t think either of those things are totally true.  But between 2006 and 2009 when the leadership of the union and the school district became more adversarial over ProComp, it was often because they couldn’t… they didn’t cultivate that kind of culture in their discussions.  And instead what they did is they rooted themselves more deeply in the need to share power as a way to solve problems.  And you know, it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t solve their problems and they didn’t share their power.

That’s going to be a fun quote for the people in Denver.  (laughing)

Any final advice on how to best reach out to each other as teachers to get behind a system or a particular professional approach where ‘the rewards outweigh the risks?’  I mean you talked about how to get involved, of going towards your best hopes versus your worst fears [and] the specific roles you can do.. Anything else you’d like to offer to say ‘here’s how we should be organizing and thinking as teachers?’

Final thought here.  I say this a lot when I’m working with people that view unions as an inscrutable other, such as [those in] reform organizations or people training to be superintendents.

I say, ‘when was the last time that you changed your mind because someone sat across the table and demanded that you did so?’  And these ambitious and highly interested individuals pause for a minute and remind themselves that it’s a point of pride to not be coerced into changing their minds.  And I remind them that that’s the way that any right thinking teacher or union leader would think.  But for us as teachers to presume that we’re going to bend somebody’s will or policy orientation by sitting across the table and demanding that they do so is just as foolhardy.

What we really have to do is realize that we’re not going to change the graduation rates in this country, we’re not going to change the proficiency and exit rates in this country, by demanding that somebody else change their mind.  We need to be responsible not only for our minds and its change but for engaging the minds of people with whom we work, so that we’re all solving the problem together.

Brad Jupp Reflects

And you don’t learn that skill [any] better than you do than when you’re teaching.  So I think teachers are in the right position to take up the lead in the next generation of reform.  But they’re going to have to go back to their roots in the classroom, where they get 4^th graders to learn how to multiply fractions, or where they get 6^th graders to read Ezra Pound’s The Seafarer.  Those are the things that are the hard, right things that we’re best at and we should go about solving education reform matters using the same skills.

***

There are certainly a lot of compelling ideas here.  Do you agree with the points raised in this conversation?  In what ways can you imagine teachers here in the Boston Public Schools ‘taking up the lead’ in the dialogue and work of school improvement and reform?

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

The time that President Obama spent on the theme of education during the recent State of the Union address was admittedly short–which is why this article by the current Teaching Ambassador Fellows based in Washington DC (with BPS’s own Shakera Walker among them) was so refreshing to read.

Let me admit my bias upfront:  I think this piece situates teachers in the swirl of education reform and education policies exactly right.  Feel free to share your own thoughts at the end of the blog article below.

Teachers Want to Lead the Transformation of their Profession

“Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal.  Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility:  To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”

– President Barack Obama, January 24, 2012, “State of the Union”

Tuesday night President Barack Obama said what many teachers in America have been yearning to hear from their president: teachers matter, we change lives, and we do this hard work to make a difference in the lives of students.

He also acknowledged what every good teacher knows: that an accountability system that puts too much emphasis on test scores undermines a well-rounded education. But implicit in his speech was a challenge to America and to teachers to rebuild and strengthen the profession – a challenge that teachers are more than eager to accept.

As 2011 U.S. Department of Education Teaching Ambassador Fellows, we have heard from many teachers that the field has lost its luster. In our role as Teaching Ambassadors, we have talked with teachers in many groups, and we have heard real despondency over the constraints of NCLB that have caused schools to focus on testing and teacher evaluation in ways that are oppressive and rob our profession of much of the joy of teaching and learning.

We’ve listened to countless stories about a law that has raised standards without providing support for schools to meet them. And we have cringed when some of our most effective colleagues acknowledged that they can no longer afford to stay in a difficult profession that asks so much of them but barely affords a middleclass lifestyle. “We didn’t get into teaching to be millionaires,” they say, “but we have to be able to feed our families.”

What we like about the President’s speech is not that he acknowledges our grievances though, admittedly, it feels good to be heard. What appeals to us is that the President understands that as a country we must do much more than simply tweak a structure that is not working. Educators want to lead the transformation and rebuilding of teaching so that our work improves students’ lives and restores pride in our profession.

Teachers welcome this transformation. Neither students nor teachers are served by a structure that treats some teachers like interchangeable cogs in a machine. We long to lead our own profession because when we drive our craft, we will see huge shifts in the responsibility, leadership, pay and respect. As NEA President Dennis Van Roekel describes in the NEA’s December 8, 2011 Action Agenda to Strengthen Teaching, “The true essence” of our work “is putting teachers in charge of the quality of their profession.”

What would teachers do if they ran the schools? We would raise the bar for membership in our profession, recruiting the best candidates and insisting that teacher preparation programs become more rigorous and relevant. About 62 percent of all new teachers—almost two-thirds—report they felt unprepared for the realities of their classroom. As Secretary Duncan has said, “Imagine what our country would do if 62 percent of our doctors felt unprepared to practice medicine—you would have a revolution in our medical schools.”

A transformed profession would give teachers much more responsibility and flexibility to make decisions that meet their students’ educational needs–allowing access to and training with technology, shifting class sizes, and restructuring the school day so that they have time to collaborate with colleagues and engage in professional learning and problem-solving.

We would offer teachers a professional salary and career pathways that acknowledge their skill and commitment in one of the most complex, demanding, and important jobs in the world. We would insist on great school leaders, with principals who have high expectations, develop all teachers as lifelong learners, and create positive school cultures where students and teachers succeed.

As the President acknowledged, teachers are creative and passionate. But like workers in many other professions, we expect to be held accountable for results. We yearn to help create fair and thorough teacher evaluation systems and have access to data to make informed decisions about what is working and what isn’t, to direct our professional learning, and to help decide who stays in our profession. President Obama was right when he said, “That is a bargain worth making.”

Now more than ever, teachers long to lead their profession so that we finally resolve the important educational challenges in this country. A quarter of our children fail to finish high school on time and barely four in ten earn any type of post-secondary degree. For children of color, outcomes are even worse. When we see the statistics–that 7,000 students drop out of school every day–we feel pain for those teens and shame and guilt that we were not able to prevent this tragedy.

On top of that, school districts are getting ready to slam into an awful reality, that before the end of the decade, more than a million Baby Boomer teachers—fully a third of America’s teachers–will retire or leave the teaching profession. To recruit and retain the best teachers, we need to offer rewarding jobs and competitive salaries.

We were especially pleased to read in the Blueprint for an America Built to Last, released yesterday with the speech transcript, that the President plans to ask Congress for funding that will “challenge states and districts to work with their teachers and unions to reform the entire teaching profession – from training and licensing to compensation, career ladders and tenure.”

Educators want to take on this work. As highly skilled specialists, we are not afraid of owning our profession. We are not afraid of being held accountable for results when we are given the responsibility and flexibility to craft our profession. We are confident that the President understands what it will take to transform teaching to meet the challenges of the 21^st Century, and we are eager to join with our colleagues across the country in moving the profession forward.

2011 U.S. Department of Education Teaching Ambassador Fellows Geneviève DeBose, Claire Jellinek, Greg Mullenholz, Shakera Walker, and Maryann Woods-Murphy.

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

Are you a teacher looking for an unparalleled opportunity to learn about education policy? Are you interested in bringing the voice of the teacher to local, state and federal avenues and to also bring relevant information back to your local school and school district? I was fortunate to participate in the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching Ambassador Program over the 2008-2009 school year. And over the last few years, the theme of ‘once a Fellow, always a Fellow’ has continued to open learning opportunities for me as a teacher, as well as the ongoing expectation that I continue to work on increasing the capacity and efficacy of teachers to be heard by our local leadership and institutions…and beyond.

Information about the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship and application information can be found here. Do pass on the word to anyone you know who might be interested. The application deadline for this year is February 22, 2012.

If you have any questions about the Fellowship or want to know more about my personal experiences with it, don’t hesitate to drop me a line. As of this year, four BPS teachers have been a part of it–Steven Berbeco of Charlestown High School, Robert Baroz of the Curley School and Shakera Walker of Young Achievers Science and Mathematics Pilot School. Robert is a current Classroom Fellow and Shakera is a current Washington Fellow.

Represent!

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

There were some bitter, bitter winds cutting through our bundled coats, doubly wrapped scarves and clenched hoods this Wednesday evening at the BTU rally before the school committee meeting.  The enthusiasm of the hundreds of gathered teachers and other allies, however, was inspiring to witness.

Here are some photos I took from the event.  Consider sharing in the comment section below.  Were you there?  What were your thoughts on the gathering?  Did you feel a pulse of unity as we waved signs, blew whistles and waved at drivers smiling our way?  What should be next?

 [Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

I had the unique opportunity to attend a convening of the twelve Race to the Top state teams in Washington DC this past week.  In case you haven’t heard, Race to the Top is the federal competitive grant program that incentivizes participating states to either build or accelerate school reform efforts around a few key, identified areas:  college and career ready standards, teacher and leader effectiveness, data systems to improve instruction and turning around struggling schools.  There are sizable dollar amounts behind the RttT program– four billion dollars.  That’s right.  Bil-lion.

I learned quite a lot, along with some other dynamic teacher colleagues from the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship.  And while I do hear and understand the vocal criticisms to the program, namely the continued emphasis on testing and unknowns related to creating ‘value-added measures’ in teacher evaluation, we can’t ignore the opportunity (and urgency) of getting thoughtful teachers in on the conversation now to shape and inform its ultimate policies.  Massachusetts is one of the RttT states and decisions and policies are being made real-time.

There was one particular theme of the RttT convening, however, that continues to run through my head.  It relates to the emphasis, whether intentional or subliminal, on the individual teacher as the most important factor in the efforts to improve learning outcomes for students across the nation.  I raised some of these issues in the context of a focusing illusion a few weeks ago. And this op-ed piece by a Los Angeles charter school teacher does a compelling job laying out her complex feelings around this same emphasis.

Take a moment to read it and consider leaving your own comments/thoughts at the end of this post.  What messages are you getting around the levers that are most important for improving our schools and closing achievement gaps?  Do you agree or disagree with those emphases?  Do you understand the evolving policies at the federal, state and local levels and how they could potentially impact your work as a teacher?  How can extraordinary and hard working teachers organize and contribute to the improvement of our public schools in a meaningful and sustainable way?

Extraordinary isn’t enough.

Yes, we need to get rid of bad teachers. But we can’t demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

July 31, 2011|Ellie Herman | Ellie Herman is a teacher at Animo Pat Brown Charter High School in South Los Angeles

The kid in the back wants me to define “logic.” The girl next to him looks bewildered. The boy in front of me dutifully takes notes even though he has severe auditory processing issues and doesn’t understand a word I’m saying. Eight kids forgot their essays, but one has a good excuse because she had another epileptic seizure last night. The shy, quiet girl next to me hasn’t done homework for weeks, ever since she was jumped by a knife-wielding gangbanger as she walked to school. The boy next to her is asleep with his head on the desk because he works nights at a factory to support his family. Across the room, a girl weeps quietly for reasons I’ll never know. I’m trying to explain to a student what I meant when I wrote “clarify your thinking” on his essay, but he’s still confused.

It’s 8:15 a.m. and already I’m behind my scheduled lesson. A kid with dyslexia, ADD and anger-management problems walks in late, throws his books on the desk and swears at me when I tell him to take off his hood.

The class, one of five I teach each day, has 31 students, including two with learning disabilities, one who just moved here from Mexico, one with serious behavior problems, 10 who flunked this class last year and are repeating, seven who test below grade level, three who show up halfway through class every day, one who almost never comes. I need to reach all 31 of them, including the brainiac who’s so bored she’s reading “Lolita” under her desk.

I just can’t do it.

I’ve been thinking about the challenges of teaching a large and diverse class in a new context lately. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently said that, in his view, the billions spent in the U.S. to reduce class size was a bad idea. Many countries with high academic achievement, he noted, have accepted larger class sizes to pay talented teachers more and concentrate larger numbers of kids with the best teachers. “The best thing you can do,” he said recently in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, “is get children in front of an extraordinary teacher.”

That’s a common viewpoint at the moment. Every day I see data showing that in countries such as Japan and South Korea, students score higher in reading and math, often with larger classes, and that the U.S. has spent a tremendous amount of money reducing class size to little effect.

But a huge percentage of students in Japan and South Korea pay for after-school tutoring to make up for a lack of individualized attention at school. Finland, with the best scores in the world, has average class sizes in the 20s, and it caps science labs at 16. Still, it’s become a popular fantasy that all you need is a superstar teacher, and that he or she will be just as effective even as budget cuts force us to pack more kids into each classroom.

I’ve taught for the last three years at a charter high school in South-Central Los Angeles where all the teachers are excellent. Our test scores are high. We have terrific administrators, and because teachers are a priority, unlike almost any other LAUSD school, we haven’t had layoffs; even so, our school has had to allow enrollment to rise to stay on budget. My largest class last year was 34. My smallest was 20. And I can assure you I was a whole lot more “extraordinary” in my smallest than in my largest.

I’m not sure what the breaking point is, but once you get much above 25 students, providing individual attention becomes difficult. To keep my English class of 31 under control, I have to rely on high-energy routines and structured group activities. In place of freewheeling discussion, I pepper the room with rapid-fire questions. To respond to their essays, I use a rubric emphasizing the four or five qualities I’m targeting for the whole class, and then write one or two short individualized sentences at the bottom of the page.

With more than 150 students in my classes, I don’t have enough time to spend more than five or 10 minutes on each essay.

Do students really learn best this way? A whole chunk of my students are alienated by this highly structured environment: the artists, the rebels, the class clowns — in other words, some of my smartest kids.

On a good day, about a fourth of my students don’t do the reading or the homework; if I set up a conference after school, they might show up and they might not. Why? Because one kid thinks he has an STD, and another girl’s brother just got out of juvie, and another guy wandered to the ice cream truck and forgot. Because they’re teenagers. Because they’re human.

And that’s my biggest problem with the myth of the extraordinary teacher. The myth says it doesn’t matter whether the crazy kid in the back makes me laugh so hard I forget what we were talking about, or two brilliant kids refuse to accept my rubrics, scrawling their long-winded objections as a two-part argument that circles over every square inch of the backs of their essays — the makeup of the class, the nature of each student and the number of students are immaterial as long as I’m at the top of my game.

But nobody talks that way about the children of the wealthy, who can pay for individual attention in tutoring or private schools with small classes. I understand that we need to get rid of bad teachers, who will be just as bad in small classes, but we can’t demand that teachers be excellent in conditions that preclude excellence.

Our children — even our children growing up in poverty, especially our children growing up in poverty — deserve to have not only an extraordinary teacher but a teacher who has time to read their work, to listen, to understand why they’re crying or sleeping or not doing homework.

To teach each child in my classroom, I have to know each child in my classroom. We teachers need to bring not only our extraordinariness but our flawed and real and ordinary humanity to this job, which involves a complex and ever-changing web of relationships with children who often need more than we can give them.

I’m willing to work as hard as I can to be an excellent teacher, but as a country we have to admit that I’ll never be excellent if we continue to slash education budgets and cut teachers, which is what’s actually happening in California despite all our talk of excellence, particularly in schools that serve poor children. Until we stop that, we’ll never have equal education in this country.

Copyright 2011

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

Happy New Year!  In the vein of starting off 2012, I’d like to volunteer one of my personal resolutions:  to try and break the automaticity of writing ‘2011’ on any writing surface, paper or otherwise, by the end of the month.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  (Riveting, isn’t it?)

Now let’s get to the good stuff.

For the last two column articles, I was happy to present interview responses from our union president Richard Stutman, as well as forty-two year teaching veteran Jerry Howland of Another Course to College.  I have another two, excellent interview transcripts forthcoming as well, one from a senior policy advisor to Secretary Duncan and one from another teacher-leader in BPS.  Both had thoughtful, provocative things to say.  Definitely stay tuned.

Dividing Lines in a Road, Dividing Lines in our Profession?

This month though, I wanted to spend some time in consideration of the Other.

What do I mean by that?

Consider the multiplicity of the typical, practically pre-folded divisions that can be named right off the bat in the realm of public education.  Younger teachers and what they want, as opposed to veteran teachers and what they want.  Traditional public schools versus charter schools.  Schools and students with good test scores on one side, and schools and students with poor test scores on the other.  Labor interests as represented by the Boston Teachers Union, versus management interests as represented by the Boston School District.

Lines drawn, sides identified and positions hardened.

And doesn’t the capitalized Other almost bring alien-like beings to mind?  It emphasizes a particularly formed set of opinions, biases and positions with completely oppositional characteristics—as if the Other is a golem formed from an entirely different river’s clay.  (That one is inspired from Michael Chabon’s excellent book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  Do check it out).

The Other, in other words, is the result of a kind of groupthink that’s substantiated, and then perpetuated; it’s a way to make sense of a complex environment.  We all do it.  It’s about identity, about orientation and even can stretch to moral convictions of what is right and what is wrong.  Politics, anyone?

The problem, however, is the following: while identifying Otherness can help us begin to make sense of complexity, it does very little to meaningfully resolve it—or perhaps more accurately, to build (as opposed to tear down) within that complexity.  Effective and meaningful change, one that keeps students at the center of the conversation, while also balancing the needs and interests of multiple constituencies, has to lie in the vast area between the drawn lines of Otherness.

So what can we do about it?

It’s no secret that I’m a believer in collaboration, as both an operational tone and strategy, to effectively improve our work in our classrooms and schools—and beyond that, in our school district and the public education system at large.

The Roads We Travel

I also know, like you certainly do, that it’s a lot harder than it sounds.  It’s not simply a matter of scheduling an extended group hug, afterall (although I think that would be something else to witness.  Everyone put your arms around the person next to you and smile!  Squeeze gently!  Do it again!).  And just consider the complications and mistrust that always swirl around education policy concerns, in particular the translation of education policy to its often-unsteady manifestation on the ‘shores of our classrooms.’

I do want to suggest, however, that positive momentum builds off of small, core successes and exemplars.  And that if we as teaching professionals want a place at the decision-making tables, our union itself needs to reflect collaborative, barrier-reducing approaches as central to the professional organization.  There are potent opportunities for our union to make collaboration around teaching and learning a true hallmark of our work together—collaboration that involves, and even depends on, participation from and partnership between all teachers, new and veteran.

BPS teacher Robert Tobio of the Mary Lyon pilot school and Bill Madden-Fuoco of the Urban Science Academy suggested the same in their Diary of a New Teacher articles from the AFT Advocate earlier this year.  Reflecting on his initial mistrust of the union, Robert concluded with the following:

…We have a responsibility to our students. I still believe education is the single most important variable in many kids’ lives. But now I believe in being part of the union—union, not just in name but also in action. We need to support each other and to push each other. We don’t need public outcry or district evaluations to improve. We need to share our successes with our colleagues and to improve our weaknesses by learning from colleagues. Every teacher has something to offer and every teacher can improve. We need to continue to improve, as a strong union of professionals.

We are part of a union, we benefit from our fellow union members, and we need to ask if they are benefiting from us.

Compelling, isn’t it?  What opportunities and structures can our union create to facilitate this type of sharing and learning within our schools, and between them, across the city?

I, for example, would love to hear how Bill is doing with vocabulary instruction improvements that he referred to in his own article, and his newly adopted ‘Flagged for Success’ experimentation related to student data and strategic intervention.

In language, in structure and deed, let’s do something to address one of the core question of this Teaching Pulse forum:

How can we build membership interest, involvement and investment in the Boston Teachers Union as an organization focused on teaching and learning in the classroom?

As Bill similarly ended his own written reflections, Let’s talk about that.

***

As always, please consider visiting the online forum at www.theteachingpulse.org to offer your reactions, thoughts and suggestions.  All the best and here’s to a great beginning of 2011…, er, 2012.

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

You’ve heard the adage before.  Money can’t buy happiness.  But it seems like we’re always giving that old saw a run for its money–as if we don’t quite believe that to be true.  As a general principle, sure, our internal monologue might go, but for me, having a few extra bucks to get that fancy coffee drink or to jet off to that faraway vacation place sure sounds like a plus.  A happiness inducing plus…  and double that ability?  Double the happiness, right?

Stanford’s Nobel winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman offers a different assessment, arguing that a principle called a focusing illusion misleads people into believing that having more money makes them happier, especially as scientific studies have shown that there is little to no difference in a person’s moment-to-moment happiness as a result of overall wealth.

An Illusion for Illustration

An interesting idea, for sure.  He also extended this idea, one that suggests that nothing in life is as important as when you are actively thinking about it, to the realm of education. He explains:

Education is an important determinant of income–one of the most important–but it is less important than most people think.  If everyone had the same education, the inequality of income would be reduced by less than 10 percent. When you focus on education you neglect the myriad of other factors that determine income. The differences of income among people who have the same education are huge.

One wonders how this understanding might change the urgings that parents and we as teachers continuously message to the assembled students in our classes year after year.  Aspire and focus on your education, absolutely… but also understand the other factors and circumstances, some within your control and some outside of it, that will also play a role in your potential economic success.

Somehow, the message loses its edge and promise, doesn’t it?

I’d like to apply the concept of the focusing illusion a bit further.  Consider the current emphasis, from both sides of the political spectrum, of the importance of the teacher as the most important determinant in students’ academic success.  Teach for America is predicated on this idea and individuals ranging from Michelle Rhee to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have also emphasized the same message:  nothing is more important than having a good teacher in front of kids.  And while there is absolutely truth to that idea, the end result of this focusing illusion is that teachers, and solely teachers, are ones who should be offered all the glory or made to shoulder all the blame in public education.

And the myriad of other factors that we know so significantly impact the day-to-day effectiveness (or at times, lack thereof) in our classes?  Ranging from class size and attendance issues, to parental involvement, to the complex socioeconomic effects on students from disadvantaged households?

Decidedly out of focus.

So I have to wonder: are the complex workings of a public education system too large a target for one particular focus?  What should the focus be to adequately bring to light possibilities of steady improvement without inappropriately burdening one individual cog in the machine, no matter how important that cog may be?

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

You might have seen the recent series of Boston Herald articles focusing on what the paper called BPS School Success stories.  These pieces were also highlighted on the Boston Public Schools website.

So how to describe the mixed feelings reading them?  Because for sure, no one wants to hear that a school is doing poorly and it’s certainly important to rally around success stories of school leaders, teachers, parents and students doing well in a school community.  But when simplistic articles like these reinforce the divisive dichotomy between ‘good’ schools and ‘bad’ schools, and ‘good’ kids and ‘bad’ kids, particularly by often roundly associating charter schools and ‘mid-20 something teachers’ with the good, and the unnamed and undifferentiated mass of district, unionized schools and their teachers with the bad, it just rings terribly, terribly wrong.

Other thoughts and reactions to the article series, including the one on UP Academy below?

Rejuvenated school helps kids reach new heights

By Jessica Heslam  |   Tuesday, November 29, 2011  |

UP Academy photo

The Herald is showcasing four standout Boston public schools that are operating largely under the radar with a five-part series on innovative efforts to boost urban education. Yesterday, the Herald profiled TechBoston Academy, which President Obama visited in March. In the second part today, the Herald visits South Boston’s UP Academy.

School cop Victor Ortiz was the only familiar face from the former Gavin Middle School who was still in the building when it reopened as UP Academy this school year. Ortiz, who has been at the South Boston school for seven years, says he already sees a difference.

“The kids have more structure in place,” Ortiz said. “Overall, there’s a very positive vibe. It’s a good change.”

The academically floundering Gavin was shuttered last June. Unlocking Potential — a nonprofit, Boston-based organization that whips failing schools into shape — was tapped to reopen the building as a semi-autonomous in-district charter school that serves grades 6 to 8.

Teachers from the Gavin were invited to reapply. Five did, but none were re-hired. More than 4,000 people from around the globe applied for 57 teaching and administrator jobs.

Over the summer, the building underwent a massive clean-up, with more than $150,000 in renovations, including money spent on new furniture and technology.

The new teachers — mostly mid 20-somethings — showed up Aug. 1. Students returned on Aug. 29. The school year is longer and so is the day, which starts at 7:30 a.m., with dismissals at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Students wear name tags because all their teachers are new.

At age 33, principal Amanda Gardner had already spent seven years as founding principal of Boston Preparatory Charter Public School before coming to UP Academy.

Students just took their first round of math and English interim assessments, given by the nonprofit Achievement Network. Gardner said they were at the network’s average or right above it.

“Given the schools that are in this network, that’s a really powerful sign,” Gardner said. “That was a pretty substantial improvement from where Gavin had been performing on those assessments in years past.”

This is Unlocking Potential’s first school. Gardner said UP Academy’s ability to hire its own staff and choose curriculum — as well as the longer school day and year — are major factors for success.

“We sweat the small stuff all the time,” CEO Scott Given said. “We consistently hold our students to very high expectations, both behaviorally and academically.”

Every classroom in the pristine school is named after a college attended by teachers and staff members. And when the bell rings, students don’t pour into the hallways in a massive mob — the teachers change rooms. When youngsters do switch rooms or head to lunch, they walk in single file, eyes focused straight ahead.

So far, overall, Gardner said her sense is that students are “really happy,” getting to class on time and respecting their teachers.

“We all know that people are watching us to see how it goes,” said Gardner, “and we’re excited about that.”

Tomorrow the series continue with a focus on Orchard Gardens in Roxbury, a turnaround school that is already making strides.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1384488

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]

Happy December, everyone!  I don’t know about you, but there’s always something disconcerting about how dark it gets by late afternoon this time of year.  Full darkness by 5PM?  It’s enough to make you want to stay under the covers for a month or two straight.

But we don’t.  And this month’s first teacher interviewee Jerry Howland definitely doesn’t.  A teacher and school leader for the past forty-two years, including years at the McCormack Middle School, the former Jamaica Plain High School and currently, the pilot school ACC (Another Course to College), Jerry has been honored as the 1994 state teacher of the year and was one of four finalists for the national teacher of the year award.

Teacher Jerry Howland, Another Course to College

But what comes out in this interview, even beyond these highest of honors, is his continued sense of mission, humility and a palpable belief that what makes the day-to-day work most worthwhile, is the opportunity to engage and challenge his students day in and day out.  And if his students and colleagues are any indication, he’s certainly been making the most.

***

First of all, thanks for taking the time to meet and talk a little bit about yourself as a teacher.  You were honored as the state teacher of the year in 1994, and I believe you were one of the four finalists for national teacher of the year?

I was one of four finalists, but I lost the swimsuit competition…

I’m sure it was a close call… (laughing)

(Jerry laughs)

You also mentioned that you are now in your 42^nd year as a teacher—an incredible achievement.  And I’m sure there are many, many other achievements and accomplishments that others, like [fellow ACC teacher] Chris Mee, would be quick to mention as well.

Chris credits me…but have you seen him?  [It’s] amazing what he does with the 9^th grade mind.

One of the key themes of The Teaching Pulse is an attempt to make conversations around best teaching practices a central focus of our professional organizations.  And one way I’m hoping to do that is by talking to some of the best teachers in the district and sharing those conversations with other teachers across the city.  I hope that these questions help guide us into a great conversation.

How would you describe yourself as a teacher? Can you give me a picture of how you approach your work as a teacher in BPS?

Chronologically, I started out as a math teacher and I was teaching at the McCormack Middle School in Columbia Point through the 1970s.  I went to Harvard, did a masters in the Education program, and then I went to Jamaica Plain High School as a housemaster (still teaching, but also doing discipline), and then I became a department head of math, science, health and physical education.

I was still primarily teaching math until the mid 80s when they asked me to teach a law class.  In fact, the person who was teaching that class got sick and I took over for the year and started teaching the law program.  And by the time English High School moved in, I stayed and I switched from teaching four math and one law [class], to teaching four law and one math [section], just the calculus class.  The law [course] became a very popular class.  And it’s a great course to teach because teenagers have a genuine interest in the law and [to know] what’s fair and what’s right.

Jamaica Plain High School History Faculty, 1982

I began doing mock trials after a few years.  And the excitement [they] generated because of the competition and drama was a clever way to engage kids without them [immediately] realizing that they were doing reading, writing, speaking and critical thinking.  And then [there was the opportunity] to take kids beyond that for those who wanted to do more.  We have [for instance] extracurricular interscholastic competitions with Harvard Law School and Suffolk Law School.

In the summer, I do an internship program called the Judicial Youth Corp.  It’s with the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts and that’s where we get usually about twenty kids [participating] from the city.  They work four days a week in the courts and I get them on the fifth day.  It’s an ideal way to teach—they’re in the real world, and then they come to me and I can [match] the theory with the practice.  And we end up at the end of the summer doing a major mock trial in a real federal court.

What would you say is your favorite part of teaching now?  What sustains you from day-to-day?

It’s the same… people ask me a lot of kids [if] kids are different today.  And I don’t see that.  I see the kids as almost exactly the same as they were forty years ago.

What got me engaged in Boston my first year was my assignment to the McCormack Middle School.  What they did then [during the desegregation of the city schools], if you were a first year teacher, they would assign you to an all black school and as you got seniority, they could transfer to the white schools.  So in the black schools, there was a turnover and they kept on getting brand new teachers.  That’s how I ended up there.

But you remained there.

I remained there.  And when I went for the interview, the principal told me ‘you don’t want to work here’.  [The Columbia Point] neighborhood and the housing project there had the 3^rd highest crime rate of any neighborhood in the country.  And actually at that time, I wasn’t planning on being a teacher.  I was just going to go teach during the day to go to law school at night.  I thought teaching would be a part time job, and no problem (laughing) … little did I know.

But when I taught there, I found the kids were very different from what he had described.  Kids had a lot more potential that they weren’t achieving.  I didn’t help them the first several years; it took me several years to make any kind of in-roads.  But I really enjoyed it.  And I decided to finish law school anyway but to stay in teaching.  So I ended up staying in teaching.

I took the bar exam.  And said just in case… in case I no longer enjoyed it, I could find something else to do.

That still hasn’t happened yet.

If I had started teaching in Newton North high school, I’d probably be a lawyer right now, because what attracted me to teaching was the social justice aspect.  And for me, I grew up in the city of Boston.  I grew up in a housing project right up the hill here, [on] Fidelis Way.  And it wasn’t until I was 21 years old and I was at the McCormack Middle School that I realized and understood what it meant that Boston was a dual school system.  And it was happening right before my eyes.

That was the first that I saw I was doing something worthwhile.  [It] was the first time that there was something that I thought was important.

[The] kids say “I want to be like you because you know everything.” So I say, “No, no, no… I think I know everything. There’s an important distinction”

A lot of folks I’ve talked to, including myself, are hungry to learn from master teachers.  Is there a specific “Jerry Howland” approach or a transferable practice that you can share with us?

The most basic thing is [to actively utilize] trial and error.  The first time you go through [a course] I may say ‘that worked, that was great so let’s save it in the program/curriculum for next time’ or ‘that didn’t, so I’ll either change it or [remove] it from the curriculum.’

It’s like you continually refine and you’re responsive to what’s working or not working.

[Another] thing that I thought was very effective was having the kids fill out evaluations at the end of each term.  And one of the best things about kids is that they’re painfully honest. (laughing)

How do your students describe you?  How do they describe Mr. Howland?

That’s interesting.  One that I get a big kick out of, because I’ve heard it a lot this year already, is that kids say “I want to be like you because you know everything.”  So I say, “No, no, no… I think I know everything.  There’s an important distinction”  (laughing).  That’s just an advantage of being around a long time.

Is there one particular moment in your many years of teaching that stand out and encapsulate who you are or who you strive to be as an educator?

Anytime you see a student doing and being successful at something that they didn’t think they could be successful at.  The most recent was a girl we had last year and that I had in the law class, who at the beginning was a typical high school public speaker but by the time she finished, she was so impressive.
When mock trials are over [for my law classes], I have the students face each other and I tell them to pick someone and tell them something they did well and why.  And so the kids usually put out everything that I was going to say and I only need to add, if anything, a few things.

My favorite thing to do though is to call the parent when something [really special] happens.  I call and I say hi, this is Mr. Howland [and] I have your son in my law class.”   You can hear the person suck and hold their breath; you can audibly hear it.  “I just want to let you know that your son did the closing argument in the trial today and did fantastic”, and then give details about why it was great.  And then you can hear them exhale in relief.  Because usually, no parent gets a phone call with good news.

So I love making those phone calls.  And I’m particularly eager to make them for those kids who were unusually successful where they hadn’t been successful before.

What are your thoughts on the BTU as a professional organization?  What role do you feel it’s played to support you as a teacher or should it play to support teachers like yourself or other teachers?   Who should we as teachers look to in order to sustain ourselves?

There’s definitely a need for the Boston Teachers Union.  Whether you agree or disagree with what they do, even if you don’t study history, you know there’s a definite need for someone to bargain on the behalf of the teachers.  Now you may disagree with some of the things that they prioritize, but I think the union has evolved over the years since 1970.  They’ve walked that line between doing both… what’s best for the students and best for the teachers.  They are primarily working on behalf of the teachers.  But I think they’ve done some things over the years that have benefitted both.

Economically, any time the economy turns bad, people start turning against each other and competing for fewer resources.  So that’s part of the issue now.  And also when you negotiate, it’s one of those things where when it becomes public, [a position] may sound absurd because you don’t start with what you want, both sides are thinking they are going to come to the middle.    It’s the nature of negotiations.

But there’s definitely a need for the union to protect the rights of teachers and the issues that are going on now with merit pay and those things.   I would be in favor of merit pay if there was a system to determine it.  But there isn’t.  They can’t design one.  It’s not possible.  It would create a lot more problems than it would solve.  Because they can’t give people enough money to make it a viable incentive and to get you to do something that you weren’t going to do anyway. And on top of that, [the exceptional] teachers do [all the extras] anyway.  So it’s not going to provide incentive, [but actually] a lot of bad feelings.  It’s going to create a tension and dynamic that’s not going to be productive.

And it’s all over a couple of thousand dollars. And then there’s the means for doing it.  With standardized test scores, there a very few standardized tests that relate directly to what someone is [teaching] in the classroom.  Take the 10^th grade math [MCAS scores] for instance.  Who’s responsible for that?  The teachers [who have taught the students] leading up to [that assessment], or the teacher that year?

When I was a headmaster here [at ACC], I told the English teachers here:  Teach a college level curriculum and don’t teach to the MCAS.  If you’re teaching a college prep curriculum, then the MCAS will take care of itself—you don’t need to worry about that.  And it’s not something we want to be judged by anyway.. it’s a low level test and if you want to teach the high level college level analytical writing skills, work on those.

I’d love to hear your perspective in your roles as a teacher and also as a principal/school leader.  What have you learned from those dual experiences?  What implications have your experiences had in shaping what you think it takes to have a collaborative school environment?  Are there any lessons that you think could be extended district-wide?

My philosophy as an administrator was to hire good people, and then to give them complete freedom to design and teach the curriculum, even [if their approach] was different from [my own personal way] to teach it.  We had the flexibility to do this because we are a pilot school.

The reason I did that was [in consideration] of the schools I worked at as a teacher.  The people I worked for at English High and JP High gave me complete freedom.  They let me do whatever I wanted and because they did that, it was my program.  So I did more than I would have [than] if I was [just] following someone else’s directions.  So I put so much more into it.  And I wanted to create the same opportunity here.

Are there any final words you’d like to end with?

I’d say in general, the teachers today are so much better than the teachers through the 70s and 80s; so much better.  [They’re] much more dedicated, more talented… and a big part of that has to do with the desegregation of BPS.

When I started teaching, people were in either all white schools or all black schools.  And when they were started to be desegregated, [white teachers] started getting kids of color, and a lot of them were unhappy about it.  It affected their teaching as they didn’t have expectations for those kids.  [It was] pretty ugly through the 70s and 80s.  Because of low expectations for them, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Some pretty ugly things were going on.

But those people are gone now.  And the people who are coming in?  We’re getting a lot of really, really talented people.

And maybe the question is how to get those teachers to remain and continue to have opportunities to grow.  But one thing that I’ve always felt is that I’ve always disliked that divide between newer teachers and those who are veteran teachers.   If there’s anyway to better connect the two groups, I hope we do it.  Hopefully this is a venue that helps to do that—to say we’re all teachers in the Boston Public Schools and this is what we’re here for.

I hope this also bridges the gap because people don’t get the chance to see what other teachers are doing.  You know how your day goes (laughing).

***

Yes, I absolutely do.  Thanks again, Jerry, for taking the time to do this interview.

For comments and conversation around any issues that Jerry raises, please visit the online forum at www.theteachingpulse.org.  And if anyone has one of those indoor sunlamps I can borrow in the meanwhile, give me a call?

[Click here and scroll down to see and add comments to this post]